Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Eastern Rosellas

A couple of Sundays ago, I mentioned my surprise at seeing Eastern Rosellas in a tree in my street; usually the only parrots we see here are Rainbow Lorikeets and Corellas.We do get sulphur crested cockatoos flying over and the parklands have plenty of galahs, but they rarely land in the neighbourhood trees.Yesterday, in our local Messenger newspaper I spotted a small article explaining why the Eastern Rosellas are here.Nesting boxes!!

"Nesting boxes are filling fast. An Unley council nesting box program has been hailed a success.Two eastern rosellas were sighted nested in a box on Windsor St, Parkside. An adult rosella and five chicks nested in another in Aroha Tce, Black Forest.Residents said a pair of kookaburras used a box in Grove St, Unley Park."Well then. Nesting boxes supplied by the council are bringing a wider variety of birds into the suburbs. This makes me happy.

A few days ago, fishducky posted funny images of people doing silly things, one of which was someone attempting to dive into an above ground swimming pool (missed and bounced off the side), and it brought back a memory for me.

Many years ago, we were living in Enoggera, Brisbane, soldier hubby, me, a toddler and a baby; we had a house on a large block of land that sloped from the front fence all the way down to the back fence, I think the only piece of completely flat land was the carport. The house was near ground level at the front and up on supports at the back. I'll see if I can find a photo....

you can't really see the slope of the land, but the front porch was ankle height to me, this is the back of the house. This is me about two weeks before baby #1 was born.

Anyway.....fast forward a couple of years and a friend gave hubby his old above ground swimming pool.

this is not it! This is a googled image. Thank you google. The pool given to us was similar in size and style as that one above, but several important bits were missing, like about half of those circular sections that clip around the top to hold the PVC insert in place and a couple of the outside support struts.

We didn't know this until hubby had put it all together, but it seemed sound and should hold together, right? We'd patched a couple of tears in the liner with duct tape. We're not giants and were only going to splash around in a couple of feet of water, what could go wrong?

Oh and there wasn't any ladder either.

But that wouldn't matter....we were on sloping ground, a run and a jump should do it.

Hubby got the hose and started filling it with water. After half an hour he got tired of holding the hose, so coiled several metres of it in the bottom of the pool and let it run while he came upstairs for lunch and a beer. Eventually the pool held enough water to satisfy him and the hose was turned off and removed.

Now came the important moment. First swim.

Hubby backed up the slope a bit, ran towards the pool and took a leap.

Remember this pool is standing on sloping ground, we knew nothing about having to level the base and put down a ton of sand etc.

So, the run, the jump.

He landed on the water causing a tidal wave to flow right across to the other side which promptly collapsed and all the water flowed out, down to and through the back fence with hubby sit-surfing on the surface.

Funniest thing I'd ever seen. And of course I hadn't thought to record the occasion on camera. We laughed ourselves silly.

Next day, when the ground had dried enough, we reconstructed the pool, put in about sixinches of water and lifted the kids in to splash around. Well the toddler splashed, the baby was only a couple of months old, so I held him sitting in the water and splashed his tummy. Being on a slope, I had to remember to always sit on the high side so my weight, a mere 52kg, wouldn't cause the low side to collapse again. We eventually packed it away and stored it under the house and I don't remember what happened to it after that. I know we did get another one years later, brand new so all the necessary bits were there and a bit smaller too. A Christmas gift for the kids.

We'd moved into a house in Watsonia, Melbourne and the back yard had a large, flat, circular patch where previous residents had placed their pool. In Watsonia, I remember waking up very early one summer morning to thesounds of splashing coming from the pool. I knew all the kids were still in bed, (we had four kids by now), so I sent hubby out to see who was in our pool.

Two kids who were visiting for a weekend sleepover next door! Only four years old, the twins had seen the pool, sneaked out of the house and climbed our side fence to get in the water. They were sent to their room where they responded to the punishment by throwing all the bedding out of the window and half the toys too. Luckily the pool was near empty, because we'd had the baby in there the day before, at ten months old he didn't need four feet of water to have fun. We marched the twins back next door and emptied the pool until they went home.

Five months old. Baby #4This was winter, before we bought the second pool.

joeh; he would have been! Might have even gone viral. I think the nesting boxes idea is a fabulous one and hope more councils follow suit.

Elephant's Child; it was a fun day, i remember that much. I hadn't known about the nesting boxes, but I'm glad they're happening and hope more are put up in all suburbs. it's the least 'we' can do after destroying so much habitat.